Escaping Z-Day
by XxItaChanxX
Summary: [Re-Written] Athena Brooks and her friends are forced to fight off the undead threat as they try to find some kind of salvation for themselves. It's a good thing that Athena and her pal, Samantha are both gamers and know all they need to about zombies and how to kill them. It is up to the two of them to lead their group to some kind of Shangri-La before they're killed one by one.
1. Account 1: Athena (1st Account)

**Account 1**

**Athena Brooks – 1****st**** Account**

**Z-Day**

Z-Day was the day that changed everything.

It was the day in which the recently-deceased began to reanimate and return to the world of the living, only to be on a mission from hell to eat, attack and kill the rest of the human race. You would think that the dead coming back to life would have made everyone excited to see their loved ones again, or to be able to speak to those who had died long enough to know what the after-life was like and if there really was a God – but all of those people idiotic enough to try and approach the walking dead to hold them or ask them questions about whether heaven and hell are really just a myth, ended up as a part of the undead army themselves.

Besides, we don't need to ask whether hell is real or not – we now live it in every single day of our lives.

Scientists called Z-Day the day that the Earth began to be destroyed. The religious called Z-Day the apocalypse brought upon us by an angry deity. The scared called Z-Day the day of death. They were all right in some way or another – except, by this point in time, I'm almost adamant that there is no God to cause the apocalypse or show mercy. If he were real, then he was clearly incapable of the latter if he were really allowing so many innocent people to die and in such painful and cruel ways. There are so many different names for Z-Day, but the majority of them refuse to put the word 'zombie' in their titles; people say that it's not appropriate or human to call the undead zombies, since they used to be people - emphisis on the _used to _part of that sentence.

Do you know what I say to that?

They _are _zombies. Anyone who had ever watched a zombie movie or played a zombie video game would know that when the dead come back to life and start trying to eat you, that means that they're a zombie. Do you know what gamers like me called Z-Day?

Z-Day.

That's what it was. It was officially Zombie-Day. The day that destroyed the Earth. The day that the apocalypse occurred. The day where many people died. And the day when zombies rose from their deathbeds and spread a condition that could only be cured with a blow to the head and having your brain destroyed – as you can imagine, not many people really liked that cure, so they searched for another one, only be unsuccessful.

The moral of the story is that you should always listen to T.V. and your video games.

Until Z-Day, that's all that I used to do. Read violent or gruesome books, watch horror movies and play video games, whatever the genre. That was my life apart from school - I saw all of my friends online when I played games, so I didn't really tend to go outside. I wasn't a teenager with much aspiration or even a real goal in life; all I really wanted was to get through the day so that I could play some games online or study – and even studying was slowly falling lower and lower on my priorities list.

I guess that once Z-Day happened, my priorities fell to the natural survival instincts of a human being – eating, breathing, drinking water and surviving each day. In the old days, those were things that no one would even think twice about, but nowadays, actually finding food and water and living to actually consume it was a task and a half. Being able to sleep more than an hour at a time without having to jump up from the floor that you'd slept on because of paranoia – rightful paranoia by the way, since you never know when the next zombie attack could happen – was impossible. Being able to wonder the streets at night wasn't just a case of you possibly getting mugged or raped, but now it was a case of possibly dying – I would take the risks of walking at night pre Z-Day than post Z-Day any day.

As it became more evident that world was more of a dangerous place than ever, the more we had to be aware and awake and the more that we had to try to stay alive rather than find something to do every day to say that we had done something and gone to bed knowing that you hadn't wasted your day.

I guess that when the death became an everyday occurrence for the people around us, we really started to live.

The odd thing about Z-Day was that it happened on such an ordinary day. For me, it was a school day – so the whole day was definitely more mundane than any other day. School had a way of making me feel tired the second that I walked through the gates and home had a way of making me feel more awake the second that I crossed the threshold into the house – that was only because I knew that once I was in my room, I could play games until I was knocked out. I remember being extremely tried on Z-Day. Even more tired than on a usual school-day, which was probably because I had spent the night before playing _Dead Island _with my gamer buddies until I literally just collapsed on my bed - I hand't even logged off online, so the group just assumed that I fell asleep, since I tended to pass out while staying up late to game quite often. They never complained about it, but I could tell that they hated it when I just disappeared.

I stood on the school roof, leaning against the cement wall that separated me from being safe and glancing to the P.E. lesson bellow me or a very sudden death if I fell from where I was. The younger students beneath me were running through the basketball courts in their red shirts and black shorts, seeming to only want to run away from their teacher. Today, they were scheduled to use netballs on the court to practice handling the ball for a real match; however, it appeared that all the kids wanted to do was play catch and bounce the balls – which was funny to me since in Netball, the ball isn't supposed to hit the ground at all. I still remember little rules like that from my days in school - they were boring and I pretended not to listen to them, but they still stuck in my head.

The teacher seemed to be getting really annoyed with the kids and their want to simply mess around, but I couldn't help but smile at their carefree attitude; that's what P.E. was to me and my classmates – a time to mess around and let out our adrenaline so that we didn't mess around in class too much – and I wouldn't have expected that to change for future generations either.

I know what you're probably thinking. You're questioning why I was on the roof when lessons were going on, right? Well, dear reader, I was on the roof because I needed a break from class and needed to take some time to myself. This wasn't the first time that I had taken a lesson to relax on the roof and if the dead hadn't risen in order to eat everyone and their mother, it wouldn't have been the last. The only things that really prevented me from resisting the urge of not going to class was that the teachers didn't catch me up there since no one ever went to the roof at school and no one ever saw me, and the fact that on the roof, I could play horror games on my PSP – I bet my parent regret buying me that thing for my fourteenth birthday now.

Playing games wasn't the only thing that I did when I skipped class and hung out on the school roof. I would read, draw and sometimes even sleep up there when it became more humid – thank the Lord that I didn't sleep on this particular day since I wasn't very keen to be disorientated during the most dangerous and life-threatening day of my life. Although, now that I think about it, every day was now the most dangerous and life-threatening day of my life.

One other thing that I did while on the roof was talk to a certain individual who tended to come up to the roof just as much as I did.

"Athena!"

Speak of the devil.

I turned around, a soft smile on my face as I laid eyes on my closest friend and fellow class-skipper and gamer.

"Hey, Ibrar…" I said softly, as he wondered through the door to the roof, smiling back at me.

As usual, he wasn't wearing his school uniform properly – to be honest, forcing 6th form students to wear uniform was ridiculous in itself, but I followed the rules so as not to draw attention to myself – and he entered through the door to the roof with his usual mixture of style and clumsiness, tripping slightly over his own feet, but continuing to walk normally, clearly hoping that I hadn't noticed. His white-collared shirt was tucked out of his dark blue jeans – which were clearly not black trousers – and his white trainers – which were not smart, black shoes – were slowly falling apart and desperately needed replacing.

I understood his need to rebel and go against what the school wanted him to do, but he could have chosen a more discrete way of doing it; I skipped class sneakily and didn't do some of the unimportant work that I was given, but I still wore the uniform and didn't argue with teachers like he did. Ibrar did all of that and more, but with a more 'in your face' attitude. I wore the idiotic white-collared shirt, tucked onto my pencil skirt and black dolly-shoes – and trust me when I say that wearing a shirt was a pain in the backside when fighting and running away from zombies – and just sucked it up. I didn't understand why that was so hard for him to do.

He approached me and took the space next to me, starting to lean on the wall as I had been doing moments ago; I morphed back into the position that I was in before he arrived, breathing in the fresh air of the spring day.

"You okay?" he asked casually.

"Yeah." I replied with, still smiling, but looking out to the P.E. lesson taking place bellow us; there was another P.E. lesson going on under the other side of the roof which I could hear, but not see from where I was. "I'm just too tired to go to History. You?" I yawned to emphasise my point.

He chuckled. "That sounds like you. I'm just hanging here so that I don't have to face that bitch of a teacher, Miss Bucher."

My vision went to his slightly bearded face as I realised that his slick, brown eyes were already on mine. "You and that women and going to fight until the world ends, aren't you?"

"That's right!" He didn't even know how 'right' that statement was. "She yells at me for simply being near other students, thinking that I'm bullying them!"

"Well, you are a part of the schools gang and, no offense dude, but you dress like a hooligan." I held back a slight chuckle at what I had just said as I watched the disagreement fire up in his eyes.

"Maybe if teachers stopped treating me like one, then I would stop acting like one." His finger pointed towards my uniform. "You may look like a good student, but you don't act like one. Why don't they hate on you?"

"Because I'm not in a gang, I get good grades without doing all of my homework, they don't catch me skipping class and I don't talk back to teachers." I playfully pushed his hand away to stop him from pointing at me and he smiled in response. "Teachers don't like it when they think that their authority is being challenged – like all adults – so I work around that and make them think that they control me when they don't. It's how you survive being a kid."

"We're seventeen, Athena." His words seemed to have to be forced out of his mouth. I was sure that he hated being too young to be considered an adult. "We're not kids anymore."

I tilted my head. "To them…we are."

My buddy reached into his pocket for what I knew would be his packet of cigarettes and a lighter. That was another reasons why some teachers simply wanted him out of the school – he smoked and he didn't care where or when, but he always did it. I was on Ibrar's side when he spoke of freedom of choices in life, but smoking was something that I didn't agree with. I didn't want him dying before he was thirty of lung cancer and he shouldn't be infecting others with his second hand smoke - especially when there were kids in out school as young as eleven years old - but it wasn't as if he was going to listen to me. He hadn't for the three years that we had been friends and he wouldn't now…but I could still try.

As he flipped his lighter open and lit his fag, I slyly stated "You know, if you stopped smoking, the teachers would have more of a chance of liking you."

He simply snorted. "I don't care what those fuckers think. You know that."

It was worth a try.

He pushed his cigarette packet in my face and gestured for me to take one. I frowned. "I don't smoke, bro. you know that."

His white teeth were shining from the reflection of the sun above us with that smug expression on his face that I knew so well. "That's why you're so stressed out all the time."

I jokingly punched his arm, with slight seriousness in my fist; I did wish above all else in regard to Ibrar that he would simply quit the disgusting habit that he had seemed to acquire during the early years of his adolescence. He would never listen to me, but my attempts would continue until I knew that he would just stop smoking and take part in more healthy recreational work activities like maybe gaming more with me or reading or even just watching movies. Hell, he could paint in a forest naked for all I cared, I just wanted the smoking to stop.

We spent about the amount of time that it took for Ibrar to finish his cigarette to have a normal and decent conversation about how annoying teachers were, our love lives – which at the time were non-existent – and games that we wanted to buy. We just used simple banter that we would always use during our conversations; the talk that we'd had couldn't be any more ordinary for the two of us.

Once Ibrar was finished with is cancer stick, he threw it on the floor and stepped on it, putting it out; I was pretty sure that the school janitor had cleaned up Ibrar's cigarettes after we had been on the roof every time he smoked up there, since I had never seen a previous cigarette on the floor of the rooftop. I guess that it was a good thing that janitors don't tell teachers everything that they come across when they clean around the school – I wouldn't want mine and Ibrar's time on the roof to be cut short by a teacher who – like most of them in the school – was just inching for a reason to expel my friend. Plus, I could get into trouble for skipping class or they could even accuse _me _of smoking as well - teachers did tend to get students into trouble with the head teacher without any proof.

He turned to me and asked "Hey, do you know what time it is?"

"You have a phone. Look at it." I replied with a jokey frustrated tone to my voice.

"I don't have any battery left." I sighed. Ibrar tended to either not have his phone with him or he _somehow _always never had any battery on his phone; it's no wonder why his parents keep calling me at night to ask if I knew where he was when they could never get through to him.

I reached into my pocket reluctantly and checked the time for him. "Sure. It's-."

"EEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!"

We both jolted at the excruciating sound of children screaming. We instinctively checked bellow us, seeing if something had happened to the children in their P.E. lesson who were playing catch a moment ago; none of them seemed hurt and they were, in fact, running towards the other side of the building and actively ignoring their teacher who was telling them to stop. They were heading towards the P.E. lesson on the other side of the school block – we both instantly clocked that there was something bad happening over there, since the screaming wasn't stopping.

We both nodded at each other for confirmation and then sprinted, heading towards the source of the noise, jumping over stray, metal poles and random blocks on the rooftop as fast as we could; we reached the other side of the roof and both stared down towards the lesson bellow us.

My large, brown eyes widened as I laid them on the scene bellow me. It was a moment where all of reality seemed to be collapsing around me and everything that I had known to be true was a false hope; my life of indulging in horror and gore had seemed to be catching up to me and my brain was taken back to all of those hours of shooting zombies in the head and running away and hiding from them in remote houses.

I couldn't even look at Ibrar in that moment, for all my eyes were allowed to be drawn to was that blood bath that occurred beneath me.

The children from the P.E. lesson around the corner from the netball players – who had actually been practicing dodge-ball – and their teacher were all being perused by what looked and sounded like – from the moaning and groaning – real flesh eating, brain devouring, rotting, idiotic and most dangerous of all, dead zombies.

Screams covered the playground as the children from the other P.E. lesson ran in the other direction, back towards their teacher. The undead that didn't already have prey to chew on were following their lead and chasing after their new dinner on legs, back towards the other side of the school building. As for the students who were already being eaten by the living dead, there were noises coming out of them that I had never heard come out of another human being before – screams that sounded as if their voices were being retched out of the kid's throats – and the scenes of violence were like nothing I had ever seen if real life.

One child was being pulled back by her hair by a large zombie, its mouth making its way to her shoulder and holding onto it for dear life as she cried hysterically and called out for help that would never come. One little boy about half the size of me ran straight into the grasp of a skinny zombie woman who pushed him down to the floor and took a large chuck of his face off with one bite – other zombies came to feast on the child as his screaming stopped and his body became limp.

Another young boy who was slightly bigger than the last one called his teacher for help, who was running away himself and actually pushing students right into the hands of their undead hunters, thinking that he had more of a chance of escaping that way – one thing that I knew about zombie apocalypses was that people tended to show their ugly, disgusting and immoral true colours when faced with real zombies and faced with death – and as he realised that his useless teacher wouldn't be able to help him, a crawling zombie with its legs out of use, grabbed his skinny legs and took a huge chunk of it off. He screamed and fell to the floor, making it easier for the zombie to eat him and eventually and painfully kill him.

For a split second, my vision turned away from the massacre and towards the source of the undead – for that single moment, I wanted to look at somethi8ng other than kids getting torn apart. There was a gate near the sports hall that students used to sneak out of school constantly – even Ibrar and I used the hole sometimes to skip class and get ice-cream in the summer – since there was a large, gaping hole in the middle of it; the school never took care of it due to funds being used on more useless things, such as new chairs for the assembly hall or new tables for classrooms that don't need to be replaced. This lack in consideration for student's attendance had caused the walking dead to reach the inside of the school more easily than they would have if the hole would have been closed up. If it meant that I could never sneak out of school again, then I would have definitely appreciated the hole being covered up on that particular day – it wasn't as if I even used that hole too often.

I could sense Ibrar shaking, unable to believe what was happening bellow him; he reached for and grabbed my hand. He had never done this before – the most that he would opt for was an occasional hug – but I didn't say or do anything that showed him that I wanted him to let go of me. He needed the contact for emotional support and in all honesty, _I_ needed that contact, simply to allow myself to recognise that I wasn't dreaming and that the killing spree that was happening before my eyes was really happening.

The apocalypse had begun.

My heart rate increased to the point of hurting my chest and the sudden throbbing in my head was aching beyond belief. I could feel the urge to run off of the roof and away from the scene crawling in my veins, but the feeling for wanting to curl up into a ball and cry was also beginning to take over. Emotions flowed through my head worse than when entered an exam hall – I couldn't tell what my emotions were. They were all sprinting through me at top speed, causing my brain to be confused.

Fear. Upset. Anger.

It was only when Ibrar whispered "Are those…zombies? Real…zombies?" that I realised what I was feeling.

The thought of these being real, dead, not breathing zombies, caused a nervous laugh to escape my mouth, alarming Ibrar and causing him to turn towards me, sweat on his brow and eyes wide. I couldn't help it, but the laughter wouldn't stop even though I desperately wanted to control it as to not freak Ibrar out. He released my hand as I took one last look at the scene bellow me and jolted backwards, staring at him with a large grin on my face as my pupils dilated and a droplet of sweat fell down my forehead.

"Yeah…they are. Real zombies…they're real! It's a zombie invasion, Ibrar! A zombie invasion!"

On that ordinary school day in the middle of spring, I stood before my best friend, laughing and smiling like I had never laughed or smiled before. Children bellow me were dying and Ibrar was in a panicked state – as there was nothing I could have said to make him feel better or calm him down. My eyes were bright and shining as my smile continued to creep my buddy out.

Thus, Z-Day had begun.

…and as panicked as I was, I was still determined to live through it.

I just didn't quite recognise that yet.

* * *

><p><strong>Hello people :)<strong>

**XxItaChanxX here.**

**I'm just here to explain something about the story. This is a re-write of a story that I wrote and uploaded a long time ago. It is a Zombie ****Apocalypse tale based on The Walking Dead and the same zombies/walkers are used in the story. There are no characters from The Walking Dead in this story because it is based in the UK, but the premise is the same.**

**Survive and keep away from dangerous humans.**

**I really hope that you like this story and I should be uploading more chapters soon! I'll see you in the next one.**

**~Ciao**


	2. Account 2: Samantha (1st Account)

**Account 2**

**Samantha Simmonds – 1****st**** Account**

**Z-Day**

You know, trying to remember Z-Day nowadays is like trying to recall a horror movie that you had watched a few years ago – you can only remember the parts where the people died.

I had spoken to Athena about that day at different points in our travels and gone over the event so many times in my head, and now I can finally remember the tiny aspects of the day other than the death and crying going on around me; when stuck in a zombie apocalypse, remembering the idiotic, tiny details of pre-zombie life is the only way that you keep your sanity. It's the only way to keep your hope and to allow you to keep going - you know that that world will never come back to you, but you ignore all sense of reason when in the heat of running for your life or protecting your loved ones. You fight in hope that one day, you can live as you used to.

It's how us idiots survive.

Z-Day occurred on a normal, spring day. The cherry blossoms were flowing freely through the slight breeze in the fresh air; the sun was beaming down upon us and bringing light to the dull classrooms and fun-looking P.E. lessons; and the school children were playing in the playground like they didn't have a care in the world; and where was I during this lovely, vibrant day? Well, my dear reader, I was stuck inside an old, dusty D.T. classroom with my idiot of a childhood friend, cleaning up the floor without any rock music to block out the whiney voice of the moron stuck in the same room as me.

Alfred and I had just finished up sorting out the tools and placing them back into the sapphire closet at the end of the classroom, and our next job was clearing up all of the saw-dust on the ground, hoping not to get any in our shoes. The rest of class had gone to another classroom with computers to work online. Little did the stupid teacher know – I really can't remember what that big-nosed, pudgy pricks name was now – that the students never actually did the work that he had set us when he sent us to the computer room, and instead played games online and went on Facebook and Twitter. I, however, always went on Tumblr, hoping to see some new _Dragon Age _posts and fan-pictures.

Reader, do you know why I didn't get to spend the hour surfing the amazing world of fan-art and news about my favourite game? Because the basketball loving dick-head cleaning reluctantly next to me had thought that it would be hilarious to throw a pin at my the back of my head as I spoke to my friend Lilly – who also spent her time in the computer room on Tumblr, but looking at K-Pop stars and posts rather than gaming stuff, like me – causing me to get so angry at him that I ran over to that ass-hole and his laughing buddies and punched him the face so hard that he fell to the floor just as the teacher walked in. The only positive thing about this punishment was that Alfred had to suffer it with me – since Lilly explained that he threw the pin at me, which the teacher considered extremely dangerous – and I got to marvel at the delicious bruise that I had left on his dark face.

That piece of crap had always done stupid things like that to me, expecting for me to not fight back. He clearly hadn't been paying attention to my personality for the past 10 years. I wasn't one of those idiotic, girly-girls who just complained about things to men and got them to help me with my problems. I was an independent girl who solved her own shit and got it done better than any man could ever do it. So, if some little shit was throwing things at me like _he_ was, then I was going to defend myself and show him that what he was doing was wrong. Athena and Lilly had both told me that I needed to calm down when boys did stupid shit like that because it wasn't worth it to shit-stir, but I couldn't help it. When someone disrespected me, I was going to do something about it.

I glanced at my idiot of a friend and noticed that he had stopped working and was spending a moment playing a game on his phone; I twitched at the laziness and gritted my teeth.

"Hey!" I grabbed his attention as I pointed at his stupid I-Phone while realising from the noises coming from his phone that he was playing _Happy Birds_. "Put that phone away or it goes up your ass, got it?!"

He simply stared at me for a moment with his mouth slightly open and then turned back to his game, not even responding to my statement; the way that his eyes drooped slightly made me aware that he was sick of my presence already and wanted nothing more than to be away from me - in other words, he was tired of me. Little did he know that the feeling was very much mutual.

"I'm talking to you, Alfred!" I yelled out, hoping to gather some kind of response. Nothing happened. I was adamant that he didn't realise how annoyed I was, despite the fact that he knew that the moment I had to emphasise that I was talking to someone and they _still _ignored me, asses were about to be kicked and blood was about to be spilled.

Without a moments hesitation, I wondered over to the moron and slammed his hand, causing him to drop his phone as it crashed to the floor; I was sure that I could see a scratch appear on it's colourful, bird-covered screen the instant that it hit the floor. His large, brown eyes fell to the ground in disbelief as he looked upon his now broken phone - I was sure that I could see tears welling up in his eyes - the baby. He suddenly turned to me, dropping his broom and staring at me with hatred in his eyes.

"Hey!" he shouted with contempt. "You shouldn't damage other peoples stuff like that!"

I scowled like I had never scowled at him before - somehow he had the ability to make me hate men even more than I already did. "You shouldn't be slacking off like you were! Maybe if you hadn't of been ignoring the work and actually tried to help me, then your precious phone wouldn't have been damaged!"

"Do you have any idea how expensive that thing was?!" he bent down to pick the device up and shoved it in my face. "I had to save up for months to get this!"

I tilted my head and smirked. "Do you really think I give a crap about your stupid phone?"

He gritted his perfectly white teeth and growled. "Well then, how about I come to your house after school and break your X-Box?"

I snapped. I practically pounced on him and grabbed his neck. He groaned from pain - not that I cared, since he had crossed the line.

"DON'T TOUCH MY FUCKING X-BOX OR I'LL BREAK YOU!"

Looking back on these days makes me realise that these moments were what I lived for. I was the type of person who loved to game and stay inside usually; I had convinced myself that I hated going outside and talking to people - especially Alfred.

It was only when these days were taken away from me that I realised that these were the moments that I miss the most in the world.

The events of Z-Day had changed everyone who had managed to live through it forever. It brought out the best and the worst in everyone, allowing us to see their true colours and how they handles themselves and others in the face of danger. Some people were brave, life saving hero's who when put in a life-threatening situation, will charge through it if it meant saving someone they cared about or even a stranger. Some people where cowards, who ran away from danger at every opportunity and who relied on people to help them and save their asses. I hated those people.

In the apocalypse, you had either warriors, monsters or cowards. Luckily, Alfred and I didn't turn out to be monsters or cowards - I was always sure that if the dead came back to life and started munching on the living, that Alfred would become a coward. He had the mentality to run away from something that stressed him out too much and he would always scream and hide when we watched horror movies together, so I was certain that he would display cowardice during the zombie apocalypse, but I was gladly proven wrong.

Looking back on these days also makes me realise how much of a bitch I always was towards that guy. Granted, he gave as good as he got, but he wouldn't of had to give me anything if he didn't get all of that crap from me. He would just always trigger my anger and make me tempted to punch him or insult him or even break his stuff, like his phone - he should have learnt by then that buying expensive things and flaunting them in front o me was a huge mistake. They always ended up broken in the end and he always ended up crying about it; the only expensive thing that I owned was my X-Box and if anything ever happened to that thing, I would have gone to prision for murder, whether someone broke it or it malfunctioned.

But there was one thing that I seemed to be so reluctant to admit back then, which I now realise - it was never his fault.

We both eventually calmed down in that classroom. I got off of his back and he mourned over his stupid phone. I turned back to him and wondered when he would ever grow up and stop moping over his possessions. Why couldn't he simply find one thing to care about, like me. Life was so much easier when you didn't care about too much stuff - you could have more fun and actually relax, which seemed to be something that Alfred didn't seem to know how to do.

"Hey." I stated. He glared at me. "You know, the quicker we do this, the quicker that we can both go to the computers and you can play your weird, online, flash games and I can go on Tumblr."

I wondered towards him and bent down to pick his broom up; he flinch slightly, clearly worried about me hitting him again - God, he was acting as if I abused him or something. I held the broom in front of me, prompting him to take it. A small smile appeared on my face as I saw his expression soften. "I bet I can beat you at sweeping this dirty-ass floor."

Gradually, over the course of about a minute, he began to grin back at me, his sparkling teeth showing themselves to me; his dark chocolate-coloured hand reached out to grab the broom and he confidently took hit, appearing to be ready to take me up on my challenge. He was always up for a challenge when I was the one who offered it to him.

His smile continued as he started "Last one to finish up has to kiss the other ones a-."

EKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!

We both flinched as we heard the screaming for the first time. My hand automatically gripped my broom as I tensed up and glanced over at Alfred; his hands seemed to have done the same thing as mine and his shoulders appeared to have tensed up. His brown eyes made their way to mine after a moment, but panic resided within them.

The scream sounded like the younger kids who were doing P.E. outside – we both recognised their voices immediately. Now, honestly, the younger kids usually screamed during break time or when they were in P.E. anyway; it would always piss me off that they didn't seem to know how to keep their voices down when they got excited and ended up giving me a headache most lessons. I always wished that they would learn to act their age – although I didn't really act like a seventeen year old all of the time, so I was a slight hypocrite. Although, I was glad for their screaming today because it gave me a warning of what was about to come.

Also, despite the fact that those children screamed a huge amount during P.E., and we should have been used to it by that point, these screams were different to their usual screams of joy. The screaming that they tended to do were screeches of children having too much fun running around and not recognising when they needed to contain their excitement and that school was not the place to be shouting at the top of their lungs; although, these screams were those of people in pain. They scraped through our ears like nails on a chalkboard and the both of us cringed as soon as we were finished freezing and felt as though we could move again.

I was the first one to sprint towards the window. I knew that we could get a great view of behind the building from where we were and that was where the children were playing and having their lesson; there were two main courts that belonged to the P.E. department in our school and they were both either in front of the main school buildings or behind them. I didn't know if the fact that I was a gamer and that I was good with strategies was why I knew all of the ins and outs of the school and how the buildings were positioned, but it did come in handy for the events during Z-Day. I didn't try and learn them or anything – I just naturally taught myself to have a detailed mind map of the school grounds. It was completely useless to me until Z-Day.

I ran over to the window and Alfred followed almost immediately. "What the hell is that?"

"I don't know! Maybe they're all hurt or something?!" Alfred responded with as he made his way next to me in front of the window. I didn't make any comments about how idiotic his statement was since the situation didn't call for it, but I wondered how in God's name he could even think that with the amount of children screaming, they were _all _suffering from normal sports injuries, which is what he was implying.

We both stared down at the children, not knowing what the hell to expect. My eyes widened and my face became pale as I dropped my broom on the floor. Alfred did the same thing as me in perfect unison.

"Holy…shit…"

Bellow us was a scene from a horror movie that no one would suspect could happen in real life. The children that were playing and having fun only seconds ago were being attacked and torn apart; blood sprayed all over the concrete ground and the sports equipment that laid on the floor – some of that equipment managed to trip some of the children over and make them be forced to crawl away from their deadly enemies. They screamed and scurried away as fast as they could, but their efforts weren't enough to outrun the threat around them. Do you know what the threat was, dear reader?

Zombies.

I backed away from the window for a moment in disbelief, trying to take my eyes off of the scene bellow me for even just a moment to get my head around what I had just seen; my dimmed pupils made their way to the building to the left of the scene – I just didn't want to look at the bloody massacre anymore. It was too much for me to handle. It was one thing to play horror games and movies and see fake gore and blood and guts, but it was another to see real life death and gore. Most gamers back then didn't want to admit that it would be different to see real people actually dying, but they were just trying not to let their pride be harmed. It was horrifying.

Suddenly, I realised that there were two figured on top of the Humanities building. They were quite easy to make out considering how far away from me they were from Alfred and I.

Athena Brooks and Ibrar Ahmed. My fellow gamer girl and the kid in the gang who Athena always said was a nice guy, but I hadn't actually spoken to much outside of the X-Box world. It wasn't shocking to see them on the roof during class; they tended to skip lessons quite frequently together on the roof – and Athena insisted that they weren't a couple, but it wouldn't have shocked me to find out that they were to be honest.

Athena was my gaming buddy. We weren't exactly friends at school, but she and I were still quite close and we told each other deep secrets during our online gaming sessions; we hadn't even met up once after school, but there was a part of me that thought that she knew more about me than even Alfred did – and he had known me for years. There was something about gaming that made me feel more relaxed when having contact with others than if I spoke to people in school. I knew little about Ibrar apart from rumours and what Athena had told me – which ironically cancelled out a lot of the rumours that I'd heard – and I had only ever spoken to him while gaming, which usually only resulted in us yelling at each other if we were on opposite sides – in which case, Athena would be our peacemaker – and praising each other when we defeated our enemies if we were on the same side.

The two of them were glancing down at the exact scene that we were, their faces similar to Alfred's and mine. They could see the massacre below us and seemed to be flabbergasted – as one would expect. Even those two gamers were feeling as shocked as I was.

I peered back down to the bloodbath when I established that I wasn't the only gamer who was finding the scene bellow us terrifying – which gave me a huge amount of comfort for some reason – and saw students running and getting grabbed and nabbed by the undead threat; some were being eaten alive on the floor while still crying out for help, their arms flailing around, hoping to be saved. Some of them were falling over and being attacked as they tried their hardest to get up and get away. Some of them were able to run away and then were unexpectedly caught by the walking dead as they ran straight into their arms.

It was most definitely a bloodbath.

It was most definitely the zombie apocalypse.

It was most definitely Z-Day.

…and even in my shocked state, I knew that I would live through it.


	3. Account 3: Ibrar (1st Account)

**Account 3**

**Ibrar Ahmed – 1****st**** Account**

**Z-Day**

Athena was actually laughing.

We had both just been watching a bunch of children be eaten by a hoard of undead monsters – undead monsters that shouldn't even exist, might I add? – and she was actually laughing in this kind of situation. Either she had gone completely insane – which wouldn't have shocked me considering what we had just witnessed – or she was sick in the head from all of those horror games she had played with me over the last few years.

Z-Day had become one of those days that we all reflect on and wonder what we all could have done differently. There were a million things that I could have and should have done differently on that day and some of them were things that would plague my mind until the day that I died – although, I'm sure that everyone who lived through that horrific day feels exactly the same. There had always been a part of me that secretly wished that I had simply died that day along with the millions of others who had been torn apart by the walking dead, or even killed themselves to prevent the former from happening; however, that would have been the biggest kind of insult to Athena, who saved me that day.

She may have looked completely crazy in that moment, but she was the one who got me through that day alive; in fact, she was the person who got me through the rest of my zombie killing life alive. If it wasn't for her and her fast thinking and tough decision making, then I wouldn't have lived for as long as I had.

Before Z-Day, I had always wondered whether all of her video game tactics and methods were just for the consoles and her computer; she was always the one leading our group in zombie games - except when Sam played with us and they both fought to be the team leader and ended up going against each other to prove who was dominant, even though we never found out who _was_ out of the two of them - and she had always saved anyone else playing when they needed her. I thought back then that she could've easily transferred those skills to the real world if there ever was a real zombie apocalypse...and I was right.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"EEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKK!"

"OH MY GOD!"

Athena snapped out of her laughing fit instantly and we both froze in place; we could hear the students inside the three-story building bellow us screaming and crying. We could hear some of them screaming curses and some were saying the words 'zombies' and 'killing', meaning that other people in the building were watching the scene bellow us - how could they miss it? Soon afterwards, we heard a huge amount of stamping and running. They must have been running through the hallways already and panicking.

At least I wasn't imagining it with Athena...although, that wasn't a thought that was calming me down at all.

Athena jolted suddenly, her eyes widening and the colour disappearing from her face; she looked as if she had seen a ghost - although, we technically had seen solid undead creatures killing and eating the remains of people, so I couldn't blame her for seeming shocked, but it was weird timing. I expected her to have that look when we actually witnessed the scene bellow us, not a minute afterwards. I just guessed that different people reacted to different things in different ways.

Suddenly, she ran towards the edge of the building once more, her body leaning over the edge of the roof; her eyes were staring intensely at the massacre, but something about her expression had changed dramtically - I just couldn't figure out what it was.

"Ibrar...we may have a problem..." she stated clearly, but with a tremble in her voice.

I followed her lead instantly and leaned over the edge of the building, peering bellow us, expecting something to have changed in the blood bath - something had.

"Oh...fuck..."

The zombies that weren't still chowing on the poor, crying, pained children who seemed to have grow quieter now - probably because they were losing their energy to scream for help or the undead had chewed out their necks and therefore their windpipes – or who weren't chasing the luckier children who managed to get away from the scene – had figured out how to open the doors to the building and were entering through to the hallway, which led to the classrooms.

My legs became jelly as I fell to the floor and landed on my ass. Athena was now staring at me, but not with worry or concern; she had this expression on her face which I couldn't explain. She seemed calm and confused, rather than scared or frightened like I was; it was as if what was happening bellow us wasn't effecting her anymore and my actions were what she wasn't sure about.

I on the other hand, couldn't keep my calm even if my life depended on it - which at that moment, it did, since keeping calm and thinking clearly was the only thing that would have saved me that day - and I ended up in a panicked state. My legs were so weak that I couldn't get up no matter how much I tried to. My eyes were widened and filling with tears, which Athena noticed before I could stop her from seeing my face – I had never cried or teared up in front of that girl before, or anyone for that matter, and I had hoped to never have to. My whole body was trembling more than it had trembled before – even worse than when my mum found out that I had joined a gang…God, that was terrifying.

The reason that I was reacting this way wasn't because of the zombies or the fact that they had killed innocent children right before my eyes. It wasn't because of the fact that Athena had creeped the shit out of me with her laughing and strange reactions to everything. It wasn't even due to the fact that the people bellow us two were panicking and it was obvious that getting through the hallways would be difficult now that people were running through them, desperate to get away from the threat that approached them.

It was that we were both trapped.

We wouldn't be able to escape through the stairs that we had both come up to get to the roof earlier and that was the only exit from where we were. Plus, even if we could escape, there would be dead people waiting at the bottom of the building or even getting closer to the top of the building. Waiting to eat us and tear us apart like those children down bellow.

I was too young to die like that.

I never wanted to die like that.

I couldn't die like that.

Athena kept staring at me with her blank expression and then peered back down to the massacre and the zombies limping into the building, seeming to be concentrating on something specific, as if she were taking an exam.

"These zombies seem to be able to run…that's a bad sign…" she mumbled to herself – not that I noticed since I was too busy panicking. "I wonder what they detect…smell maybe? Or maybe they hunt through sight? Or noise? It's difficult to tell from here..."

She leaned forward, squinting at – from what it looked like – the sports hall across the way. Once she got her fill of the sight, she leaned back, hands still on the side of the building.

"Okay. Ibrar, I have a plan." She stated calmly, but sternly.

I couldn't respond to her. I held my knees and rocked back and forth like a frightened child, wondering whether I was going to be killed by one of those monsters or whether I would end up killing myself, like a lot of people did in zombie movies. This wasn't like a zombie movie set in America where you could find guns in nearly every house – this was England, where you could go through your whole life, even in the lower class areas and never see a gun in your life. We couldn't fight those things without guns or weapons of some kind.

Athena looked at me with – what looked like – irritation. "Hey…Ibrar."

I still didn't respond.

She sighed and resorted to leaning down, next to me; she looked impatient as if she knew that we hadn't got a lot of time to be waiting on the roof – she would have been right to say that and I was surprised that she didn't. The zombies were making their way up the building as we both sat on the floor and we were running out of time to find weapons and figure out a way to get out of the area. As far as I was concerned, we were both dead.

"Ibrar…I have a plan." she repeated more softly this time. "We can try and get to the sports hall. They have a lot of metallic bats and other good weapons there. We can fight our way out and run there without getting bitten."

I jolted and glanced up at her, eyes wide. "Are you nuts?! How in God's name are we supposed to get there without dying?! Besides, we need guns, not bats! And we can't exactly get those, can we?!"

My best friend sighed, as if I had disappointed her. "You clearly haven't learnt anything from playing zombie games, have you?"

I winced. "What the hell do you mean by that?!"

"Unless you have unlimited ammo, guns are just about as useless as a tablespoon. You need weapons that are re-usable and won't be damaged easily. Metallic bats are the best kind of weapon that we can get around here."

"E-Even so-!" I was interrupted by the sounds of ear-piercing screams coming from bellow us. It seemed as though the walking dead had made it into the building and were attacking the living. I tried to continue, ignoring the chaos underneath me, despite my fear. "Even so…how can we possibly get there in one piece?!"

Athena didn't respond to this with her words. Instead, she got to her feet and wondered to the other side of the roof top; her eyes were travelling around the ground as she looked for something as calmly as if she were looking for a contact that she dropped in her bathroom. Her eyes lit up as she found what she was looking for.

"Found one!" she exclaimed.

She held up a thin, black, metal pole for me to see, clearly happy with herself, since she found one. Those things had been on the roof for as long as I could remember. They didn't serve any particular purpose that I could think of; they were just bits of rubble that were always laid on the ground that the school had never decided to clean up or move somewhere else. They were scattered around the rooftop and Athena and I had always joked about using them to beat teachers up, but I never thought that we would have to use them against real life zombies or anything to be honest.

Athena weighed the pole in her hand and smiled. "It's light enough to hold, but heavy enough that it would do some damage to the suckers brains; at least we're not like those guys in zombie movies who seem to know nothing about them and have to figure out through the movie that they need to destroy the zombies brains to kill them. We have that advantage. Oh, I can grip this thing well too. We can use these until we find better weapons."

I couldn't find my words. I simply stared at my friend, my mouth wide and my upset and confusion as clear as day; Athena sighed once more and appeared as though she couldn't be bothered with me and my fear anymore.

"Look, Ibrar." she began. "I know that this is a scary situation and you're probably shitting your pants right now...but if we want to survive, then we need to do this. We don't have a choice."

I wasn't listening to her. All I could do was sit on the floor, compact into my ball and trying to pretend that this wasn't happening. It wasn't that I didn't know that what Athena was saying was correct, because I truly did and I wanted to get up and grab a weapon, telling her that I was ready to fight my way out, but all I could do was begin to cry.

Playing zombie games with her had been so much easier. It wasn't hard to be invincible or brave in those games when you could re-spawn after you died. This was the real world and you only lived once. If I tried to be brave and something happened to me...

I was pathetic.

"I don't know what we'll do after we get the weapons." she continued. "We'll have to figure that out later…but at least we'll have protection..."

She turned in my direction and stared at me.

The next thing I knew, she wasn't above me anymore and she was down by my side again, but she wasn't trying to speak with me anymore. She had resorted to doing something that she had never done before.

SLAP

I sat there, my hands having just let go of my knees in shock and my long legs spread out as I sat before my courageous friend. Her face was filled with anger, but not frustrated anger. It was more like situational anger. The kind of anger that built up inside of you when your younger brother keeps asking you to beat a part of a video game that he's playing and doesn't care that he's not achieving anything.

Athena had never gotten angry at me before - she had never had to. She had most certainly never slapped me before or even insulted me except when we had our banter and gave playful insults towards each other. The shock that I felt was more from the fact that she had actually just struck me, rather than the actual slap itself.

"Ibrar! I am only going to say this once!" she yelled. "I want for you to live! This is a scary-ass situation and I get that. Trust me, I'm crapping myself too...I may not look it right now, but I'm terrified. You have to believe me...but this isn't the time to be crying or sitting around. We don't have time for it. We have to get to the sports hall, get some weapons and get the hell out of here. I won't let you die, do you understand?!"

Her hands now gripped tightly onto my shoulders and tears formed in her eyes, but they never fell down her cheek or to the ground.

"I will _**not **_let my best friend die!"

The sense had been knocked into me, and all it took was a slap in the face and for me to see Athena's tears for the first time. My body was relaxed and my own tears had subsided; my legs were stern and stable once again and I was thinking more clearly now.

I nodded my head and just managed to pull off a small smile. "You're right...I'm sorry..."

Athena gave me a big grin and laughed slightly, wiping the tears away from her big, brown eyes with the back of her hand. "It's alright...just don't die on me...promise?"

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The screaming went on bellow us, inside the building and in the playground; the screams in the playground and the basketball courts were becoming louder and more screechy, meaning that the zombies had been attacking the people outside who ran out from the building, trying to escape the cannibals from inside.

I immediately got to my feet, now that the strength had gone back into my legs and peered over the edge of the building; Athena gradually got up too, but didn't move from her spot, still gripping onto the metal pole. I saw more students being captured and devoured, casuing me to freeze in place.

"What is it?" Athena asked.

"More people being attacked..." I replied. "We need to get out of here..."

Athena scoffed jokingly. "Yeah. No shit..."

"Urggggg..."

We both jolted and rotated, facing the door to the third floor of the building. Moving through the open door, now covered in blood from the undead man's hands, was the walking corpse of our old Geography teacher.

His arm was missing and dripping crimson liquid that fell to the ground; his eyes were vacant and his mouth had blood stains all around it, meaning that he had been munching on someone before he got around to the top of the roof.

Athena and I both stared at him and spoke in unison.

"Shit..."


	4. Account 4: Alred (1st Account)

**Account 4**

**Alfred Johnson – 1****st**** Account**

**Z-Day**

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I stood there, next to the girl that I loved, watching the beginning of the end of the world.

My ability to move had been confiscated from me, as I stood by that window watching the bloodbath bellow the two of us, as still as a statue. I could feel the sweat start to gradually build up and slowly drip down the side of my dark face, as I concentrated even more than I would during a basketball game with Cambridge's Secondary School team – and trust me when I say that those used to be intense as hell. I would have started to produce tears along with the rest of the signals of my fear, if it hadn't have been for Sam snapping me out of my trance and making me realise that it wasn't the time to be standing around like a child, wetting themselves on the stage of their school play during their solo act – not that I ever did that as a kid, and if Sam says differently, she's lying.

"Fuck…" she mumbled.

That was what caused me to jolt and look towards her. Sam was the bravest girl – no, bravest _person_ – that I had ever met and seeing her scared was a sacred sight that everyone who knew her had wanted to see at least once in her lifetime. Despite being this girl's friend since we were practically in nappies, I had never actually seen her scared before; I had always wanted to just once, simply so that I could say that I had. Plus, I didn't know a single friend of mine other than her that I hadn't seen scared at least once or twice before; I had even seen Athena Brooks scared while playing a zombie game with her and Sam online during a jump-scare scene. I had thought that I wanted to see this, but now that I was actually seeing Sam frightened for myself, I hated how she looked.

Her already porcelain skin had become even paler than I remembered it to be. Her hazel eyes had widened and they stared at the scene bellow us as if she was looking into the eyes of the devil – with the ultimate terror and upset within them. Her soft hands – that I one day wished to hold in mine – were trembling beyond belief and her delicate, rosy lips were moving due to the chattering of her teeth. I could tell just from looking at her that she was panicking inside of her head.

I opened my mouth, hoping to be able to give her some kind of comfort, however due to my idiocy, I could only mumble a few words quietly, as if I were talking to myself and not her.

"Sam…Sam…What…what is…this…?"

I could have been wrong, but from how she reacted to my voice, I thought that I had also snapped her out of a trance of her own. She jolted and stared up at me, her eyes watery, but not as if she were going to cry. It seemed to be more from…anticipation.

Suddenly, her body moved and she headed towards the cupboard on the other side of the classroom. I could still hear the screams and moans coming from the playground outside of the closed window, but I tried my best to drown it out, knowing that there was nothing that I could do for the children being eaten bellow me. If zombie moves had taught me anything, it was to not be a hero and try to save someone if you don't have high chances of living through it.

Sam rummaged through the cupboard, playing around with the tools in there. I wondered towards her slowly, not sure what she was doing. "Sam…why are you…the kids outside…we need to…"

"Alfred." She stopped and turned back towards me, holding a screw driver in her right hand that she had just picked up. Her face had gone from panic to determination – she was serious. "I think that it's clear what this is."

I couldn't respond. I had no idea how she was suddenly so calm. I simply stood there staring at her, hoping that she would explain what she meant.

She sighed as if she were irritated with me for some reason. "Alfred, this is clearly the beginning of something that we've seen nearly every day behind our X-Box controllers."

I winced when I realised what she was saying. "You…you can't mean…"

"Yep." Sam turned back towards the cupboard and began to rummage through it once again. "It's the zombie apocalypse."

The tears really did begin then. They dropped down to the floor faster than I could stop them due to a mixture of shock, fear and horror; I couldn't believe what Sam was telling me or how she could be so matter-of-fact about it either. I wanted to run away from her and get as far away from that classroom as I could and simply pretend that what she was saying wasn't true. I could go home and lay in bed, playing on my X-Box and having fun like I usually did after school. I wanted this to be a lie. I wanted more than anything for her to be fucking with me.

I took a few sluggish steps forward, panting and sobbing. "Sam…you can't be serious. That's impossible."

She rotated towards me once again, an aggravated look on her face. "You clearly haven't seen what's going on outside. Go. Take another look."

I shook my head violently. The last thing I wanted to do what look at those poor children getting killed and devoured by those monsters outside again. Once was most definitely enough for me. The sobbing continued, which Sam seemed to only just notice because she suddenly had a sympathetic look on her face as she tilted her head, gazing into my tear filled eyes. She leaned back against the wall next to the cupboard, pausing her searching through there for God knows what, as her eyes were staring down to the floor.

"Look…" she began softly. "I know that this is awful and to be honest, I would rather die than believe that those things out there are real zombies…but this is real. We have to accept that and figure out what to do. We can cry about it when we're safe and sound somewhere, but for right now…we need to move…and fast."

"You…" I chocked. "How can you just go with the worst case scenario like that? What if this is just a prank?"

She nudged her head towards the door. "Go outside and tell those people that they're scaring us then and stop the _prank_."

I stayed silent and simply looked at her with shock haunting my eyes. My knees started trembling when I realised that the thought of going outside to see those undead freaks was the most terrifying thing that I could think of right there and then. I refused to believe that they were genuine zombies, but at the same time, I didn't want to go out there and check either. Sam smirked depressingly when she saw my reaction to what she had said.

"That's what I thought." she mumbled. "Whether you want to believe it or not…we can't change the fact that those people, whether they're zombies or not, are killing and eating those kids out there."

She was right.

I didn't want to admit it, but she was one hundred percent correct with her words. No matter how much I didn't want to recognise it or even consider it to be the truth, she was telling me facts; whether they were zombies or not, they were still killing innocent children outside and if we ran into them, they could potentially do the same thing to Sam and I. That was something that I couldn't let happen, no matter what, but I didn't know what to do to prevent it.

I grabbed onto my head and stared at the floor, shaking violently. "What do we do…?"

Sam exhaled. Her breath was shaky, displaying that she was nervous, to say the least; she was simply better at hiding her emotions than I was. She had always been like that, ever since we were kids. I couldn't remember a time when she had cried to me or even told me when she upset during our childhood; I was the one who always cried and got angry and upset, whereas she was the one who simply got angry and took it out on me. Maybe that was her coping mechanism for when she was upset. I don't know. What I _did _know was that she was a very strong person.

"You know…" she began. "I do have a plan."

My face became a beacon of hope. I lifted my head up and stared at her with friendly panic. "What? What's your plan?"

Her back ceased touching the wall and she lifted her head up as well, her large, glimmering eyes looking deeply into mine with confidence and a positive attitude. "Well, what's the best way of killing zombies?"

I pause and thought for a moment. "Isn't there only _one _way to kill zombies?"

Sam smirked in a friendly manner. "Good. There is." She pointed towards the side of her head. "You go for their head. Their brain."

I was puzzled. "But…so what?"

The brunette was clearly getting irritated with my ignorance because she rolled her eyes and pointed towards the cupboard next to her. "What do you think I've been doing? Picking daisies? I've been looking for weapons for us."

I was still puzzled. "Wait…why?"

Sam sighed heavily and placed her face in the palm of her hand. "Really, Alfred? You're really that idiotic? I'm getting weapons together so that we can get out of here!"

Thatwas the moment in which I understood what she was saying, although I have to admit that I didn't like her plan at all. "You expect us to go out there and kill those things?!"

"What else can we do?" she asked, knowing that I didn't have an answer. "If you have another plan, then I would love to hear it."

Before I could say anything, Sam turned back around and grabbed a nail-drill from the cupboard that we had used a few lessons ago when we were trying to build bird-cages – I didn't try and make anything since I was messing around with my mates. It was a deep blue with a drill as sharp as a sword and as dull-coloured as a rainy day – which in England, were most days. Her feet helped her make her way over to me as she pushed the supposed weapon in my chest; I held it as she let go of the drill and stood in front of me with her hands on her curvaceous hips.

"That can be your weapon. Unless you have any objections." She gave a small smirk, clearly not trying to take the seriousness out of the situation, but simply being her blunt self.

I glanced down to the drill and then back at her. "You're insane…"

Her smirk turned into a genuine smile, to my surprise considering what we were talking about. "It took you this long to figure it out?"

She skipped back to the cupboard, trying to find a weapon for herself; knowing her, she wanted something that she could kill effectively with, and not bothering about how cool she looked like I would in a video game. When I imagined us out in the playground, killing zombies, I imagined it as a first-person shooter game, where we would be able to regenerate if we died and be able to carry a large amount of weapons that we could bring out when we felt like it, including guns and grenades – but then reality hit me in the head.

This wasn't a game.

This was real.

"Sam!" I yelled, grabbing her attention. "What the hell are you planning on doing when we're outside, anyway?! Where are you planning on going?!"

"The sports hall." she answered bluntly.

I froze with confusion. "The…sports hall?"

"Yeah." The crazy girl that I loved – for God knows what reasons – stated. "They have better weapons in there. Like metal bats and spears. We could do with those…and before you ask, guns would be useless the second you ran out of bullets, so we're not going to bother searching this gun-free country for any."

"And…" I began. I needed to really think about this for a moment. I seemed as though Sam had really thought about this, but I needed to make sure that she really knew what she was doing for my own peace of mind. "What about when we have the weapons? Where were you planning on going after tha-?"

"ATHENA!"

Sam pushed passed me and ran towards the window with haste, jumping over the brooms that we had dropped earlier. I followed her, irritated that she hadn't answered my question and interrupted me, since my point was one that needed addressing, however once I saw what she was panicking about, the tone inside of my head changed.

Athena Brooks and Ibrar Ahmed were on the roof of the humanities building, probably skipping class like they always did together, except that this time, they didn't look as though they wanted to be there. Ibrar was at the edge of the roof, his hand over his mouth and backed up against the bar that kept him from falling off the edge. Athena was a in front of him, holding some kind of metal object – they must have witness the scene from bellow and gathered weapons like Sam had been trying to do, which wouldn't have been a surprise for me since Athena and Sam were very similar when it came to zombies games and probably had the same thought process.

The thing that Sam was upset about was the fact that in front of Athena, wondering forward slowly was one of the monsters that we had seen bellow us, in the playground.

"ATHENA!" Sam continued to shout as if she would have been able to hear her. "We have to help her!"

The instant that she stated that, we both heard screaming coming from the building that we were in – students and teachers were both hysteric and crying out for help bellow us and on our floor. Sam leaned forward and stared down at the playground once again, her face going pale. She leaned back and ran towards the cupboard once again.

"They're getting into the school buildings. We need to do something." she mumbled.

I peered outside in disbelief, but found that she was right. Some of the children that were running away from their possible killers were leading the undead – I had to believe that they were zombies after all of this and just accept what Sam was saying – into the building that we were in. That was why everyone in the building was freaking out and screaming – they could see what was happening from their classroom windows, like we could.

Suddenly, we could hear stomping coming from the hallways; Sam stared at the closed classroom door as I did, listening to the panic and the running.

"Those idiots." she stated as she picked up a nail gun. "They're all going to get killed if they try and run through the front door. Do they _want _to get killed?!"

I shivered at the thought of the zombies getting into the building as I clutched the nail-gun in my hand. "What do we do, Sam?"

"We stay out of the chaos until it dies down and we can walk out of here without being stuck in the crowd. That's the only way we'll get out of here alive. We have to get out of here and find Athena and Ibrar. Let's hope that they can get away from that zombie on the roof…"

She reached for her backpack, which was on the floor near her and started stuffing it with screwdrivers, nail-guns, drills, scissors and anything else that we could have used to defend ourselves with.

She continued to talk. "This is going to be hard, but you have to promise me that you'll do what I say, Alfred. Can you promise that?"

I hesitated. "What are you going to ask me to do?"

She glared up at me with anger. "CAN YOU PROMISE ME?!"

I jolted. She had never yelled at me like that before. She got angry at me all the time and shouted at me, but we made up afterwards every time; besides, she had never yelled at me in such a ferocious and stressful tone before. She was genuinely aggravated and needed me to listen to her. Although, even though there was fury in her eyes, there was also desperation and determination. She wanted and _needed _for me to simply listen to what she was saying and there would be serious consequences if I didn't. I understood what she was telling me.

If I didn't listen to her, no questions asked, I would die.

I swallowed some saliva and exhaled, keeping myself calm and stopping the immense panic that was in my heart.

"I promise you."

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!"

The screams from the building were merging with moans, meaning that the zombies were in and we had to act fast. I clutched the drill and turned to Sam with energy within me now.

"Okay! Sam, what do we-?!"

PULL

Suddenly, Sam took a hold of the back of my collar and dragged me into the cupboard with her; she sat on the left and I sat on the right. Due to her clearing out the majority of the tools, there was a lot of space for us to sit down. She reached to the front and shut the doors to the cupboard, causing us to be surrounded by darkness.

I have to honest…I had no idea what she was doing.


	5. Account 5: Athena (2nd Account)

**Hello everyone,**

**I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year for tomorrow and I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas. I won't be updating until after New Years, since I'm going out for that night and will need the next day to recover from the sleep that I'm going to lose. I hope that you guys keep reading the story and I'm praying for a review soon, just so that I can get feedback on the story (^_^)**

**I want to be able to improve my writing for you guys and it would be nice to recieve a review soon. **

**Anyway, I hope that you guys have a good holiday and a good night tomorrow night! See ya'll in 2015!**

**~Ciao**

* * *

><p><span><strong>Account 5<strong>

**Athena Brooks – 2****nd**** Account**

**Z-Day**

When people play zombie video games and they assume that they could survive in that world, they never take into account the fact that zombies are quick, heavy and so hungry that they don't care how they get their food as long as they can much on something within the minute.

I didn't know what to do when one of those quick, heavy, hungry zombies made its way to the roof in the course of a few minutes, since the undead bellow Ibrar and I had started to invade the Humanities building, and began waddling towards me. All of my previous thoughts of how we would get more weapons and to not be afraid of the zombies had all gone out the window; I assumed that once I got in front of the walking dead, that I would be able to stand on my own two feet and be able to handle the situation, like I used to in my zombie video games – I was so, very wrong. In that moment, I had reverted back to a scared, little girl and I couldn't move.

"ATHENA!" Ibrar called out.

The undead teacher before me was our old Geography teacher, Mr Brown. I remembered him as being a strict teacher with a stick up his arse when it came to Ibrar, but he seemed to love me since I was a generally good student – although, Ibrar had a theory that he was a pervert by the creepy ways that he used to look at me and _that _was why he loved me so much…I couldn't really disagree with him. I always hated Mr Brown for treating Ibrar like dirt because he never gave Ibrar the chance to actually learn anything. He came up with every excuse in the book to send him out of the classroom and not let him get his grades up; I had to take time away from school to teach Ibrar whatever we had learnt in class. I remember how shocked Mr Brown was when Ibrar got A's in his exams and how great it felt to shove it in the man's ugly face. He was one of the teachers that I really hated learning from.

And now he was dead.

His rotting hands reached out for me as he moaned with a deep hunger that would never be fully satisfied. I had no time to figure out what I could do to get away from him and ended up falling backwards, releasing the metallic poles from my hands as I fell. Roughly, I landed on my backside and instantly looked back upwards towards my dead teacher and saw that he was falling as well, his mouth aiming for my face.

The rotting smell of his undead corpse filled my nostrils as he attempted to use his fleshy hands to pin me to the ground; it was horrific how that man stank. It was as if a massive mixture of rotting meat and a dead squirrel had a baby and that baby had farted after eating a bunch of eggs and beef curry – to put it simply, it smelt awful. I could feel the vomit crawling up my throat, ready to release itself onto the world and cause the stench to be exacerbated. I sucked it in so as not to make the situation worse, but I remember feeling a painful bubbling in my stomach as I resisted my need to spit out my previously eaten food of the day.

One of Mr Brown's hands went on my shoulder and one on my hair, pulling it down so that I couldn't get up from the ground; the feeling of my hair being stretched and pulled down was causing tears to form in my eyes from the pain, causing my vision to be blurred – which was something that was a very big handy-cap in the zombie apocalypse. My hands were on his person, in an attempt to get him off of me – I refused to put my hands anywhere near his mouth in case he tried to bite me, since that would mean the end of me and any hopes I had of survival. He was biting rapidly at me, indicating that he wanted me for diner – honestly, this scared the shit out of me.

Slowly, my head rotated towards Ibrar, hoping that he was doing something to help get me out of this situation, but alas, he wasn't. I couldn't have expected anything different considering he was shitting himself only moments before Mr Brown wondered towards us and even _I _– the girl who loved horror and hadn't been afraid of anything since she was seven years old – was freaking out at the time, but I didn't expect for him to be crying while sat down on the floor, watching me nearly die. I thought that he had more courage than _that_ at least. His eyes were leaking as he watched, wide-eyed at my battle of life and death; I had never seen his looking so…pathetic.

It was a good thing that I peered in his direction because I instantly noticed the poles that I had dropped onto the ground; my eyes widened as I realised that I suddenly had a chance of living through this endeavour after all.

"IBRAR!" I yelled out. He jolted and looked at me. "PASS ME A POLE! HURRY!"

He didn't move. He continued to sniffle and was now rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand; I noticed that he started to mumble to himself, which was never a good sign. I didn't want him to be losing it just yet – we still had to get off of the roof and get to the sports hall. We need to survive at least one day of this thing without going completely crazy.

It occurred to me that he wasn't going to be any help to me in that moment. He was too frightened to even move, let alone help me get away from the smelly teacher above me. This was going to be my first trial of the zombie invasion – killing my first zombie with no one's help, except for my own. I knew that if Ibrar was going to survive with me, he would have to get over his fears and realise that we won't have the time to relax and do nothing until we were dead. I couldn't really talk from how I froze up when the zombie wondered onto the roof, but I had learnt now that I would have to do the same – get over my fears.

I gritted my teeth as I pulled all of my strength together and kept pushing; this teacher of mine was a fully-grown man with a fully-grown man's weight, so I knew that this wouldn't be an easy job for a seventeen year old girl who spent her time playing video games and not at the gym, but somehow, I needed to get him off of me.

I acted on instinct and asked myself what I would do in this situation if a _living_ man put me in this position; kicking him where it hurt wouldn't do much, since a zombie's only real Achilles' heel was their brain, meaning that I had one of two options laid before me – I could either take the risk of using one of my hands, which were the only things that came between me being alive or dead, and reach for the pole myself, or I could risk him biting me by head-butting him and escaping his grip.

In my head, the former was too risky, since I could barely hold the teacher up with _both _of my hands; although, I was terrified of the zombie biting me, so head-butting him seemed dangerous as well. Either way, I had to decide fast, before my strength ran out.

I went for the latter.

BANG

Both of our foreheads collided and no one was bitten in the process. It took him a moment to realise what had just happened, meaning that the zombie stopped biting at me and trying to eat my face off. I had a few seconds to use this cease of attacking and push him off of me, which I did as quickly as I could, breathing the fresher air that was waiting for me, away from the disgusting, walking corpse.

I got to my feet and picked up one of the metal poles on my way up. Ibrar seemed astonished as to how I managed to get away from the undead prick – God knows what would have happened to him if I'd had died right there and then and just sat there, scared and alone. I was planning on lecturing him on being more courageous, but there was no time to do so, since the zombie would only be weakened for a short amount of time.

He was still on the floor when I ran over to him, gripping tightly onto the pole as I did so. I screamed like I had never screamed before and allowed for my eyes to tear up again; the knowledge of what I was about to do depressed me. Killing zombies in games was one thing – they weren't real – but killing a zombie in real life was more difficult; they may not have been alive anymore, but they used to be. Moments before this, Mr Brown was walking around the school, probably looking for skiving kids like Ibrar and I and now he was a corpse.

A corpse that wanted me dead.

I had to remember that he was about to eat me only seconds ago. He may have been a teacher minutes ago, but he wanted me dead more recently and that wasn't excusable. He was already dead.

He wanted me to die.

He was already dead.

He was already dead.

"HE'S ALREADY DEAD!"

SMASH

The metal pole collided with his rotting head and smashed right into his brain. Blood sprayed all over the ground and my school uniform; my pure, white shirt was now covered in a stinking, crimson liquid that would not wash out, no matter how many times I wanted to attempt it. I could even see little, pieces of pink flesh that I could only assume were pieces of his brain, land on the ground next to the body. The smell became more intense and the sight became more disgusting, but that didn't matter.

He needed to die.

The moaning didn't stop, despite the fact that the body was sprawled out on the floor and he began to move once again; I could see that he was trying to get himself back up, like a tortious that fell over on its shell. I couldn't imagine how painful that blow to the head would have been if he were still alive – or how quickly it would have killed him.

He still wasn't dead.

SMASH

Again.

SMASH

And again.

SMASH

He wasn't dying.

SMASH

Why wasn't he dying?

SMASH

DIE ALREADY!

My heart race increased as the sweat on my brow dripped and fell down my face to the ground. Ibrar watched in awe as I killed my first zombie and did a thorough job of it. A tingling sensation was making its way through my body while I screamed out and slammed the pole into the zombie's skull over and over again, making sure that his brain was completely destroyed.

He wasn't moving anymore. He was dead now – really and truly dead – and I didn't need to keep bashing his brains in…but I couldn't stop.

The sensation of killing another person…the feeling of having power over someone else's life…it was…so…delicious.

I couldn't stop there and then. The teacher's head had become nothing but a bunch of mush that not even the hungriest of animals would nibble at and there was no doubt in Ibrar's or my mind that his life goal was no longer to eat me or any human that he could get his hands on; however, that didn't stop me from beating into his head with the metal pole and smiling while I did it. My eyes had become wide and my mouth was even dripping saliva.

I was enjoying this way too much.

I had completely forgotten that Ibrar was there, watching my display of insanity; he was even speaking to me, but I didn't hear him at all. All that was in the universe to me was the corpse on the ground, the pole in my hand and me. I began to beat the lower body of the deceased teacher and bruise it in any soft spots I could find; I was adamant that I was breaking bones of his, but I didn't even care. All that I cared about was bashing the pole into his body as many times as I could manage.

It was so…much…

FUN!

"ATHENA!"

GRAB

Suddenly, Ibrar came out of nowhere and grabbed me, causing me to drop the pole and stare at the blood covered body before me; my friend's hands were trembling as he held me – and to be honest, I wasn't sure whether they were trembling because of the situation we were in, or because of me. I could feel his breathe on my ear as I panted myself and felt the sweat keep ripping down my face.

"HE'S DEAD! NO MORE! HE'S ALREADY DEAD! YOU KILLED HIM!"

My smile was gone. It had been replaced by the shocked face of a girl who had just lost herself. I had no idea what the hell I was just doing or why I was doing it. The feeling of beating that zombie to death was one of the most amazing feelings I had ever felt in my entire life. I had never enjoyed anything in my life as much as I enjoyed that – which I couldn't even comprehend.

I was scared.

"Ib…Ibrar…" I managed to come out with.

He let me go and turned me around so that I was looking at him, his shaking hands on my tight shoulders. He was sweating almost as much as I was and his breathe was also jagged. It seemed almost criminal how tired he suddenly looked.

"Athena…" he whispered. "Do you know what you were doing…?"

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The screams of the victims from bellow us were still going on. We couldn't ignore them anymore after what we had just gone through; the threat was a real threat. It wasn't a prank or a joke – it was a real zombie apocalypse. We didn't have time to stand around; if we did, then we would just be cornered by more of the undead and that wouldn't go down well with our limited weapons. It didn't matter what I had just done – we had to move.

I moved away from my friend and grabbed my now blood-covered pole from the ground, gripping it tightly. "We need to get out of here, Ibrar. Grab the other pole."

Ibrar didn't move. He looked even more frightened than he had a moment ago, when he had his hands on my shoulders. "Athena…you…can you not see what you were-?"

"Ibrar!" I yelled. "Do you want to live through this?!"

"Yes!" he shouted back without hesitation. "I just don't think you understand how…crazy you looked when you were…"

"We don't have time for this." I picked up the other dark, metal pole and held it out for him to take from me. "We need to get to the sports hall. We need better weapons than these that will last longer. Once we have those, we can get out of the school and grab more supplies. You've seen _Dawn of the Dead_, right? We'll need food, medical supplies and water. Anything else will be a luxury."

"Athena…" his eyes drifted to the floor. "I…I…"

My face cringed and tears gathered into my eyes once more. My voice became desperate and pathetic, much like Ibrar's in that moment. "Ibrar…"

He looked up to see my tears drifting down my face and rolling towards the ground once more. His eyes widened as I sobbed quietly to myself.

"Do you trust me…?"

He jolted. "What…"?

I wiped my tears away roughly and sniffled. "You're my closest friend…my _best_ friend. I want you to live…do you trust me?"

A moment of silence fell between us, despite the screaming and moaning coming from bellow. The wind blew gently passed us as we both looked to the ground, upset and distressed. The groans of the walking dead grew louder every second, meaning that if we didn't move soon, they would be on us like a cat on a mouse. I knew that we needed to hurry, but a part of me was afraid that Ibrar didn't want to join me in my plan.

I didn't want him to separate from me. I had a strong feeling that he wouldn't last very long without me to bust his balls for him; he always seemed to need me to tell him off and let him know how it was to get through the days in our crappy school; if it wasn't for me calming him down and telling him off, he would have been expelled for attacking Mr Brown. Plus, as much as I didn't want to admit it, I didn't want to be alone. Not now.

His grip tightened and he glared up at me with determined eyes. Without me even seeing him, he wondered towards me and grabbed the pole from my hand as he stared deeply into my eyes.

"I trust you!"

A sudden flash of joy lifted my heart in that moment and as the last tear ran down my cheek, I smiled at my best friend. He wouldn't be leaving me any time soon. Despite my moment of craziness, I wouldn't be losing him.

"Besides…" he continued. "Your…moment may be a blessing. At least you're brave enough to kill these things."

I nodded and laughed nervously. "Yeah…true."

The truth was that I was terrified of what had just happened to me. I had actually enjoyed bashing the brains out of my already dead teacher and found it extremely fun and exuberating. He had never been a good teacher in my eyes, but he never deserved a death like that. He may have already been dead, but I felt as though my actions had defiled his corpse in a way.

It made me feel sick.

…but I couldn't do anything about it.

I liked it.

"We need to go." Ibrar moved towards the door that led to the inside of the building.

To get to the entrance of the building, we would need to head down the stairs that led to the third floor, go through three hallways and two sets of stairs. In between all of those things, were flesh eating zombies and panicking people. We would need to defend ourselves well in order to make it out of the building alive. I had no idea what was ahead of us, but we needed to act fast.

I followed my friend and stopped in front of the door that led to the third floor, next to him. "Good luck, Ibrar."

He nodded, despite the fact that we weren't looking at each other. I saw his movements out of the corner of my eyes. "You too, Athena. You can…have more moments like that, but just don't go too crazy…"

"Yeah…" I mumbled. "I won't…"

He laughed nervously. "You know, I never thought that this would happen in real life. I always thought that this was something that I could only ever have nightmares about. How crazy is it that it's really happening?"

"We shouldn't concentrate on that…" I took a few steps and began to head down the stairs. "We should think about what's right in front of us!"

Ibrar followed. "True that!"

We were off.

To our deaths or our survival, we didn't know…but we were off on our biggest adventure and our worst nightmare.


End file.
